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Archive for the month “March, 2018”

Why does a nation time after time follow the same patterns rising to empire-like power and then expanding the military to control others? Emerging nations arise from the void of older established nations neglecting them, as they are on the outskirts of the main power play action. Britain and Japan off the continent. Later Germany ignored in the tussle between France and Britain in centuries past, rises to great power status in the World Wars. Low military spending was the key to the Prussian school system excellence before those wars. Now America, protected by two oceans, emerges and militarizes after World War II. The pride makes them think they are invincible, not realizing that the military economic diversion will ultimately lead to the fall of the empire. Poor science, and the military Keynesianism mistake of John Maynard Keynes, leads powerful nations to believe they can afford to spend a lot on the military. Short term thinking also leads to poor high military budget decisions. But ignorance of the Reuschlein findings, model, and defense strategy are prideful errors that really hurt. Most people are number-phobic and don’t see the negative consequences of military spending. They recognize the economic boom in military buildup areas, but fail to see the compensating decline in manufacturing in the rest of the country, especially the industrial Midwest Great Lakes states in America. Then the deficit and war bonding lift the economy in major wars, unless they don’t match the military spending as in the economic decline in 1944 through 1947 for America in World War II and the two years after the war.

Famous Presidencies

America was very fortunate to have Washington as their first president. He set the pattern of limiting himself to two terms to avoid the tendency of leaders to cling to power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But it’s hard not to notice all of America’s top presidents have a war associated with them. Wanting to set the historical record is very tempting to presidents and national leaders. Winning a war is a big part of being a big part of history. So the lure of fame urges many a leader into war. Switzerland, run by a committee, is war averse, while most single leader nations are war prone. Another characteristic of major war presidents is that they were not around to see the previous major war first hand. Average age for starting a war among American presidents is 57, hence the 54 year cycle of major wars leaves them all too young to participate in the last major war. Having served in a war can temper a leaders judgement, avoiding the reckless rush into war.

Hottest Downloads Exceeded

Since the publication of my “Hottest Downloads” press release April 14, 2017 three more academia.edu papers greatly exceeded anything on that list in the next half year. These three new blockbusters were first “Dear Future US President” posted on May 8, 2017 soared to 87 downloads on 103 views, an astonishing 84% download to views rate. The second came out as I renewed my association with “Dungeons and Dragons” founder Gary Gygax’s followers. Telling my story of how the ten years of wargaming with Gygax lead to his invention was so fascinating that 130 downloaded and 229 viewed “History of Gary Gygax and War Economy” with a download to views rate of 57% this was posted on June 18, 2017. Then in August 2017 “Military Complete Geography” was posted with its summary of the military political economy of the 50 United States. This was viewed by 158 and downloaded by 163 with most downloading two copies each. This is a download rate of 103%. My press release of almost the same name August 8th looked mainly at the top 32 states, with some small inaccuracies and incompleteness.

Nobel Prize Interest Peaks in Third Year

No one but the Norwegian Nobel Committee has tried to look at all my 183 press releases on ExpertClick.com. That signature convinced me they were very serious about my nomination from the starting two months of February and March 2016. Then nothing happened for a while as the Columbian President won the Peace Prize in 2016. But in 2017 some very strange things started happening. Twelve days before and 10 days before someone looked at 24 of the most recent press releases. I thought this meant the chair and vice chair of the five member committee were studying me. Then the same thing the night before the announcement, perhaps a search for a third vote. Then the award went to an anti-nuclear group ICAN with no coverage except the live broadcast on the BBC. The world said “ho hum”. Since then twice in November, three times in January, four times in February and on March 8th the signature pattern repeated, looking at the last 26 or 24 in a row. Of these ten different visits since the last announcement, three may have come from Germany or France, one from Australia, and one from Switzerland, since the wordpress.com website seems to precede the access to the ExpertClick.com press releases. Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe since 2009, works in Strasbourg, France and may live across the river in Germany. He has the economics background to follow me most closely. Australia could be a false lead, and Switzerland could be Thorbjorn Jagland on assignment in say Geneva, since he is the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. It seems like I may be a favorite this year, look out October 5th.

In the US constitution the power to declare war is reserved to Congress. Congress is considered superior to the executive in that it is defined in Article One while the Executive is defined in Article Two. But there has been no declaration of war since World War Two. Since World War Two the congress has let the executive choose our wars. This has been referred to as the Imperial Presidency. Since World War Two America has acted more as an empire than a republic.

This modern transformation of America resembles what happened to the Roman Republic as the institution of Emperor dominated the Senate as the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire. Today we call that process America becoming the world’s policeman.

The founding persons were well aware of the dangers of too much militarism. The father of the constitution, James Madison, deliberately under funded the War of 1812, because he knew that excessive militarism inevitably leads to a loss of civil liberties. George Washington warned us of the dangers of excessive foreign entanglements.

The cost of war and empire is enormous, starting with the diversion of key resources away from the pursuit of happiness and economic productivity to the pursuit of death and destruction. Jefferson’s life liberty and the pursuit of happiness are all jeopardized by the pursuit of endless war, such as the 186 incursions into Latin America during the twentieth century and the extension of the Monroe Doctrine worldwide with the Iraq War in 2003.

Reporters Without Borders gives America a low rating, especially during the Iraq War, because one of the liberties that suffers during war is the free press. Censorship runs higher during wartime. Jefferson has said he would rather have a free press than the right to vote. His reasoning was that with a free press the right to vote is more likely to come, while the right to vote can be meaningless in a controlled press society.

Habeas Corpus was a right taken away during the American Civil War by Lincoln and in modern times with the prisoners in Guantanamo, Cuba, during the wars against terrorists.

US Constitution System of Checks and Balances

Article I, Section 8: “Congress shall have the power to declare war.”

Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers: President is to be Commander in Chief.

George Washington warns us of the dangers of foreign entanglements and standing armies. James Madison engaged in War of 1812 frugally to avoid the loss of civil liberties. Thomas Jefferson would prefer a free press over elections. (With a free press elections are possible, without a free press elections are meaningless.)

Imperial Presidency

Rome started out as a Republic with a powerful Senate, but ended as an Empire ruled by an Emperor.America started out as a Republic but with WWII changed to the Imperial Presidency.Presidential powers in Foreign Policy today often overextend into war starting, with the Congress an after-thought.Empire, Military Spending, Feudalism, Power, Control, Violence, Corruption, all have lots in common.

Perpetual War (Empire):1947 National Security Act creates CIA with covert operations and media control Operation Mockingbird; Monroe Doctrine with 186 incursions in Latin America in the 20th Century;Iraq War: worldwide Monroe Doctrine; Terror War, widespread telephone and email invasion of privacy as Homeland Security budget quadruples in from 2002 to 2006 and grows to match that of the CIA with present estimate of $80 billion each.

Military Controlled Government

Regional Military Economics R=.97. No major component of the US federal budget is extremely unequally and politically distributed among the 50 states than military spending.This gives overwhelming political clout to those in charge of the military budget, especially presidents, congressional leaders, and committee chairpersons. Those regions and states that get more or less than their pro rata (tax load) share of the military budget gain or lose economically & politically accordingly.Military spending depletes the productive economy and redistributes to the regional “warfare” economy: creates “middle class” type welfare-like program.

“How Democracies Die” Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt, 2018.

Trump has four authoritarian aspects: Attacking the Press (and the courts), threatening Election Opponent “Lock Her Up”, Anti-immigrants, Condoning violence at rallies. Fortune 500 founders are 40% offspring of immigrants, like Steve Jobs whose parents were from Syria. Ben Franklin tells lady on street that the constitutional convention gave us a “republic, if you can keep it”.

14 Characteristics of Fascism Dr. Lawrence Britt (5-28-03 Rense.com):

Powerful and Continuing Nationalism, 2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights, 3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause, 4. Supremacy of the Military, 5. Rampant Sexism, 6. Controlled Mass Media (40 million tweet and facebook followers plus FOX news for Trump), 7. Obsession with National Security, 8. Religion and Government are Intertwined, 9. Corporate Power is Protected, 10. Labor Power is Suppressed, 11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts (climate hoax), 12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment, 13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption, 14. Fraudulent Elections.

(2017 Index: G8 countries); 16) Germany, 22) Canada, 39) France, 40) United Kingdom, 43) United States, 52) Italy, 72) Japan, 148) Russia. Both of these lists are roughly in order of the national military percentage of the economy, except that Italy is low due to Berlusconi being both owner of the media and the government, and Japan in 2017 in the midst of a constitutional crisis over changing the constitution to grow the military.

Banking and the Military

American corporate profits went from 7% to 12% of GDP in the last forty years. Financial profit share went from 6% to 30%.Financial profits GDP has gone from 0.4% to 3.6% of GDP, a nine-fold increase overall. The industrial triangle book of Gordon Adams showed that major banks and major defense contractors had corporate interlocks of 15% between just those two industries, the same percent for all interlocks in other companies.

Empire “Opportunity Cost”

Military Spending is both wasted manufacturing & lost capital investment. Military Spending takes away from the productive stream of the economy key research and capital resources.Such resources normally keep manufacturing competitive producing new products constantly being tested by the consumer and business marketplaces. Military Spending converts such resources to a national service that does not enhance the economy. 90% of military spending is for this national service. A small part of the 10% spent on research returns as civilian spinoffs.Military Spending is like a junk food diet, filling but not nourishing, Fat & Carbs without Protein to build muscles.

Using combined data from 1973-75, 1984, 1991 always indexed against the US, I was able to put all these countries on one graph. Focusing on the G7, leaving outliers Britain and France out, the correlation was R= .996. Later I noted that Britain and France correlated well (R= .93) with New England and Virginia, the four hundred year old mature societies. Japan, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United States are all about 150 year-old societies. The older countries and colonies were at 40% crime levels relative to their military spending compared to the younger societies.

Health & Social Problems index correlates -0.878 with military and -0.875 with inequality.

The above index from the Spirit Level book does a better job of proving the empire theory over the income inequality theory: These next 6 robust correlations are from the components of the “Spirit Level” health and social problems index above: showing the military economy correlation first and the inequality correlation second, the strongest six correlations are: for reduced social mobility .923 and .934, for increased prisoners .852 and .658, for increased teen births .852 and .735, for increased homicides .800 and .571, for increased mental illness .789 and .737, and for increased obesity .753 and .524. Overall the military is a much stronger average of .823 over .693. The military and inequality factors are themselves strongly correlated at .765. Based on this I would strongly suggest empire levels of military spending are a better explanation than just growing income inequality for all these disastrous social statistics.

Current History, Great Recession

Bush military buildup is similar to the Reagan military buildup. One difference is the much smaller tax cut under Bush (Less Deficit Lift).Repeal of Glass-Stiegel made crash worse under Bush (Derivatives grew 10 times since repeal). Real Estate problems developed under both military buildups. The role of the military buildup is almost completely ignored. I publicly predicted a recession in January 2007, predicting disaster for the $70 billion Iraq Surge. It takes about six months to deploy troops in Iraq, and sure enough, the unemployment rate started going up in July 2007 and worsened continuously for two years. The Financial collapse made conditions worse, but the military buildup started the downhill slide which exposed the weaknesses of the financial structure. The 2008 military budget is twice the increase of years before and after. The four economic quarters of the fiscal year 2008 are the four steepest drops in economic growth rate in recent memory.

Summary

Empires decline because they divert economic achievement resources to power projection. Military spending and manufacturing capital draw from a common resource pool so as one increases the other decreases. Low military high growth societies incentivize new product creation and achievement. High military spending low growth societies incentivize market share nitpicking & control. High Military Spending States give us 80% of US key political leaders, especially presidents, including all eleven Cold War elections.

Solutions

There will be no recovery from the collapsing nature of empire until and unless the military is reduced.The US industrial Midwest swing states that decide presidential elections will all benefit greatly from reduced military. Even the military itself will benefit from faster future growth after the initial reduction. All Great Lakes states are half the national average in military spending per capita and will benefit the most from the initial military reduction. The parasitic mostly coastal Financial and Military industries can’t be allowed to kill the inland industrial “goose that laid the golden egg.”

For original eight per page power point slides with charts and graphs at Telos 2018 Conference: